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I am looking to specify my text and div colors using very bright metallic or fluorescent colors. I haven't located any standard that shows these. Do these exist in a color specification, or can you refer me to any close attempt. Thank you.
Here's a good list of fluorescent and metallic color hex codes.
According to this:
red is #FF0000
blue is #0000FF
So what was the reasoning behind making green not equivalent to #00FF00 but instead #008000?
Although #00FF00 is a pure green in the way a monitor displays green light, #008000 is a more natural green, more like green things appear in nature and thus what people expect when they ask for something green.
If a person who wasn't familiar with the RGB color model said "I want the background to be green," I'll bet they'd be expecting something more like a leafy-green #008000 than the electric-lime-green #00FF00.
These colour names are defined that way in the W3C specs as far back as 2001. They probably predate that by a number of years. I'd guess that the real reasons why those names were chosen are now lost in the mists of time. Sometimes we have to say 'Because...'
As others have already stated, #00FF00 is lime green, while #008000 is a more natural green.
For more information on colors and their hex/rgb/cmyk/... values check out these sites:
ColorHexa
Encycolorpedia
RGB Color Codes Chart
Because it is defined like this in the spec.
If you want a keyword for #00ff00, you can use lime.
Is using yellow text on a black bg bad as Mike pointed out here? If yes what colors should I use (RGB or hex values)?
Yellow is a bad choice, but using grey intensity values varying from;
RGB: 65 65 65 to RGB: 180 180 180
can solve your problem. Gives a decent, elegant look to the site as well.
Something to try. Hope it helps.
My best color that I can match with the black background in HEX format is #x5x5x5 where x can be d to f since pure white is not really a good choice for black background especially when the font is too small and pure yellow also hurt the eyes. Use the "creamy" yellow eg: #edebad.
Anyway that was just my opinion
Thanks for the comments below. In hindsight, I should have been more detailed. I hope the edited version is clearer.
At a high-level, I want to emulate the look of paper as a screen background. This is because I find white (#FFFFF) to be too bright. I looked at a few hardcover books I own and noticed that none of them are bright white. The Kindle screen background is also not bright white.
Hence I would like to find out what is the best way to emulate the look of off-white paper on the screen. I don't want the background to be too "showy" and draw attention (I've seen swatches which emulate handmade paper with some colored thread within, I don't want that): it should just be there.
Is a single RGB value enough, do I need a repeated swatch? If RGB is enough, which ones work best? Are there websites/blogs where this has been discussed?
A seamless repeatable swatch which I can use as a background image is also OK.
I played around with some color wheels to discover an RGB value and this is the best I could do: rgb(252, 245, 216) == #FCF5D8, but I think I can do better. You see what that color looks by pasting the RGB value here: http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
It's the texture that matters as well.
i would load the body with a texture ..
body {
background-image: url(path-to-texture.png);
background-color: predominent color of that texture;
}
you can google for 'paper texture' and come up with dozens
This is very difficult to do well due to the great colour discrepancies in output devices. What is a nice, almost imperceptible yellowish tinge on one screen, may be perceived as a dirty haze on another. Just put any two screen from different lines/brands next to each other and you'll see what I mean. Depending on what this is for (personal settings / web site / application) you should leave options open to the user.
If you are looking for eye-friendly design, you may also want to look at the foreground color. I am currently building a web application and have adopted a style i which text is entirely blue (0000FF) or navy blue (0000BF) and find the results much easier on the eye than black.
All of my hardcover books are printed on depleted uranium. So their normal color is rgb(22, 44, 22)
Seriously, it depends on the book. Is it an old book or a new one for starters?
Adding a little more to this:
If you are going for a printed-on-paper look you are better off using an image than a single color, since paper is not perfect.
It has also been shown that black on white tires our eyes out faster. However, I just go with very subtle off white colors much of the time. While black on white is the highest contrast possible, black on yellow has been shown to be the most readable. Think legal pads and school busses.
It makes no sense to talk about the "color" of the printed page or a kindle, in the same way as monitor color because these are reflective surfaces and simply reflect the color that shines on them. Paper "brightness" is measured in how much light reflects off the surface. Extremely bright paper may reflect 98% or 99% of light.
The new css3 guidelines allow for hsl colors. This means that you can choose 1-2 hues, and adjust the sat and luminance values for a consistent color scheme. specs. Once you have a color, try a low sat, high lum for your background. Much easier that reconfiguring RGB all the time. Just don't ask me about browser compatibility :-)
The following are some color names and their hexadecimal and decimal RGB values. Most of them look like old paper. The "da Vinci's background" is from a painting on paper with sepia.
fcf2d7 = 252,242,215 (da Vinci's background)
f4f2e8 = 244,242,232
ece9d8 = 236,233,216
faf0e6 = 250,240,230
ffda95 = 255,218,149
f5efdf = 245,239,223
antiquewhite = faebd7 = 250,235,215
beige = f5f5dc = 245,245,220
blanchedalmond = ffebcd = 255,235,205
cornsilk = fff8dc = 255,248,220
floralwhite = fffaf0 = 255,250,240
lightyellow = ffffe0 = 255,255,224
linen = faf0e6 = 250,240,230
moccasin = ffe4b5 = 255,228,181
navajowhite = ffdead = 255,222,173
oldlace = fdf5e6 = 253,245,230
papayawhip = ffefd5 = 255,239,213
seashell = fff5ee = 255,245,238
wheat = f5deb3 = 245,222,179
This is because I find white (#FFFFF) to be too bright. I looked at a
few hardcover books I own and noticed that none of them are bright
white. The Kindle screen background is also not bright white.
The brightness of white depends on the brightness of the illumination. The difference between black and white is the relative amount of light falling on the surface. For example, a cinema screen is white, but when the projector comes on, there are areas on the screen that are illuminated and areas that are not, the latter ones we identify as black, whereas they looked white before we turned on the projector.
So, the difference between the color of the paper in your book and the white on your screen is the amount of light. If you point a brighter light on your book, it'll appear brighter too.
How about turning down the brightness in your monitor? I always do this, I don't understand the people that make their programs black on grey or grey on black. That's just a difficult way of reducing the brightness on the monitor. There's an easily accessible button on your screen to accomplish the same thing.
Is there an intuitive way, or a good mnemonic, for understanding the correspondence between colors and their hexadecimal values?
You just have to remember that the scale is 00 (no color effect) through FF (full color effect) and the three parts of the triplet are red, green and blue.
000000 is black (i.e., no color) and FFFFFF is white (mixing all three primary colors).
The hard bit is remembering the mixtures, which I use the following mnemonics for:
Really good yams: Red + Green = Yellow (potatoes are my favorite food).
Really bad prunes: Red + Blue = Purple (I really hate prunes).
Good/bad apples: Green + Blue = Aqua (I'm indifferent about apples).
Obviously, you may have to come up with your own mnemonics if you food tastes differ from mine. But I find that's the easiest way for me.
Then it's just a matter of varying the quantities to add a little more red or little less blue and so on. I generally only use values of 00, 40, 80, C0 and FF since that gives you a 125-color palette to choose from and I don't want an abundance of choices to slow me down.
You need to get your head around three distinct things here.
Reading and writing numbers in hexadecimal. This just takes practice and familiarizing yourself with it. Color codes range from 00 (zero) through FF (= 255), so spend a little time (using calc.exe in Scientific mode, maybe?) picking a number and trying to guess what it'll be in hex, and vice versa. Counting in decimal is probably second nature to you; counting in hex is the same concept, with different symbols and rules.
How to read an RGB colour code as three component values. RGB codes are either written as three digits (#FFF) or six (#FFFFFF). In the first case, each digit is a single colour component; red, green, then blue. 0 = empty, F = 'full' (maximum). The second is the same but the additional digit gives you a much wider range of tones because you have 256 possible intensities for each component instead of 16.
Knowing the RGB colour model. Your primary colours are red, green and blue. Your secondary colours are yellow (R+G), magenta (R+B) and cyan (G+B). Increasing all the values makes the colour lighter; decreasing them all makes it darker. Pure greyscales will have three equal components - e.g. #ddd, #222. Tint greys by nudging one of the colour values up a bit - #866 will give you a dark grey with a hint of red. This bit you just have to learn through experience. Play with it. Get a tool like Instant Eyedropper and use it to find the hex values of known colours.
Getting it exactly right is very, very hard, but it won't take more than a couple of days before you can say "right... I want orange, which is somewhere between red (#F00) and yellow (#FF0) on the colour wheel, so let's try splitting the difference and use #F90... hmm, bit dark, so let's nudge the G and B components up a bit... #FA2... got it!"
Just think of it as mixing paint.
There are the three components RR, GG, BB, (RRGGBB) which can be mixed with different strengths. Remember that 00 is lowest strength, and ff is highest.
For example, we know that 000000 will be low strength on all colors and will be black. Likewise, ffffff is highest on all three color components, and will be white.
You can add or remove color by making one part stronger or weaker. For example, start with black 000000, and add a little red as 330000, or add a little blue with 000033. Add both and see what happens 330033.
Add a LOT of red, with ff0000. Or add a medium amount of green for 006600.
If all three components are close to the same strength, they cancel each other out and you have grayscale, which will be light or dark depending on the strength of the colors. So 000000, 333333, 666666, 999999, and ffffff are black, dark greys, ligher grays, and white.
If you take a medium gray, and add a little blue, you end up with a bluish grey, like 888899. Red, green, and blue almost equal, so almost grey, but with a bit more blue. You can experiment with them a bit.
One really great tool for viewing color codes is this (small and free):
http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html
Hope that helps!
I'm not sure what you mean, but I always remember that it is an RGB colour: The first two digits are for red, the second pair is for green and the las ones are for blue.
like this: #RRGGBB
And of course trying to remember that lower numbers give darker coulours.
If you are looking for some way to remember the colour code for orange, I'm afraid you are out of luck. I always need to look that one up...
Hexadecimal colours are of the form #RRGGBB where RR is red, GG is green and BB is blue. Since they're hexadecimal they range from 00-FF. It should be fairly easy from that to gauge roughly what kind of colour you're dealing with for example #FF12A3 is going to be fairly red.
Break the colour up into a triplet of values that represent red, green and blue. The higher the hex value in each segment then the more of that colour there is. So #000000 is black, #FF0000 is all red, #FF00FF is purple etc.
I think it's useful to get a good HTML color chart and keep it by your desk. I like the Visibone mouse pads and posters.
Remember:
1) The order of the hex-pairs are Red, Green and Blue. This is easy to remember since we aften talk about RGB-color, RGB screens and so on.
2) The numbers should interpreted as the amount of light in the color. So 00 is no light, while FF is maximum light in that color.
3) I all three colors are of the same level, they "cancel each other out", so we get a greyscale color. 00 is minimum light, så if all three colors are 00 we get no light - ie. black. If all three colors are max-light (#FFFFFF) we get white, Any number in between is grey.
Well, monitors use an 'RGB' colorscheme. The order of the colors in the hexadecimal number is RRGGBB. So just remembering the name of the colorscheme tells you what goes where. Then you can parse the #RRGGBB as three numbers RR, GG and BB.
The higher the number the brighter that particular component.
Then you just need to remember the additive color wheel from grade school. ;)
I manage to create colors intuitively now (with some trial and error, of course), having practiced them a lot. Playing/using color mixers (with red/green/blue sliders for example) helps in understanding relationships. Now, I know that FFFF00 is yellow, FF00FF is magenta, 00FFFF is cyan, plus of course primary colors, and all others colors are in between.